Motor Imagery and Sport Performance: A Systematic Review on the PETTLEP Model

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for the invitation to review the paper 'Motor imagery and sport performance: a systematic review on 2 the PETTLEP model'. The article is very interesting and systematic reviews in the field of imagery are needed. 

The changes I would suggest are:

- adding new studies to the introductory section (sometimes only old ones are included)- for example: 

Hardwick, R. M., Caspers, S., Eickhoff, S. B., & Swinnen, S. P. (2018). Neural correlates of action: A comparison of meta-analyses of imagery, observation, and performance. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 94, 31-44. 

- Introduce the PETTLEP model very briefly in the introductory section, and expand it in the discussion as it is now

- In the figure it is not clear how many titles were excluded in the Screening phase because they were not related to sport......

- also in the figure in the Eligibility phase it says that 10 articles were excluded, but 23-10 = 13. In the Included phase the authors show 12. Please clarify.

- I would recommend adding a table where each included article is described, as it is in most systematic reviews. This may be in the supplementary material, but I did not notice it. It would be better to include it in the main text. 

- please standardise the font of the text and references in the text (sometimes they are without brackets)

- line 235 page 8:

"Visual imagery can be internal (first-person) or external (third-person), depending on whether the athlete is imagining himself or herself or another person performing the task [53]".- in an external perspective it is also possible to imagine oneself, but on a screen - please correct it 

Thank you.

Author Response

AUTHORS: We would like to thank the Editor and the Reviewers for the general positive judgments about our work. In the following our point-by-point responses to the qualified comments of the Reviewers that helped us in furtherly improving our manuscript in its revised version. To facilitate their work, we have also reported here (between apices and in italic style) the changed/new parts of the manuscript added in accordance to their comments.

Reviewer 1

Thank you for the invitation to review the paper 'Motor imagery and sport performance: a systematic review on 2 the PETTLEP model'. The article is very interesting and systematic reviews in the field of imagery are needed. 

AUTHORS: Thank you very much for your general positive judgment about our work and for the following qualified suggestions that we have carefully taken into account for improving our manuscript.

The changes I would suggest are:

- adding new studies to the introductory section (sometimes only old ones are included)- for example: 

Hardwick, R. M., Caspers, S., Eickhoff, S. B., & Swinnen, S. P. (2018). Neural correlates of action: A comparison of meta-analyses of imagery, observation, and performance. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 94, 31-44. 

AUTHORS: Thanks for this suggestion, we have added the following sentence citing the above study (new reference 32) and we have cited in Conclusions other two more recent studies (new references 143 and 144, respectively published in 2022 and 2020):

“Several models propose that motor imagery, movement execution and action observation recruit the same brain regions, but recent observations suggested that the functional equivalence in subcortical are-as regard the first two acts, whereas action observation did not consistently recruit any subcortical areas [32].”

- Introduce the PETTLEP model very briefly in the introductory section, and expand it in the discussion as it is now

AUTHORS: According to this comment we have added the following sentence in Introduction:
“Among the motor imagery models that could have a practical application, the most interesting seems to be the PETTLEP model, that takes into account many different domains related to motor imagery: Physical features, Environment, Task-related aspects, Timing equivalence, Learning, Emotion, and Perspective.”

- In the figure it is not clear how many titles were excluded in the Screening phase because they were not related to sport......

AUTHORS: We are sorry, for a problem in formatting the figure this information was hidden, we have now fixed the format of the figure and all the information are clearly visible.

- also in the figure in the Eligibility phase it says that 10 articles were excluded, but 23-10 = 13. In the Included phase the authors show 12. Please clarify.

AUTHORS: Sorry again, it was related to the above formatting problem, numbers moved far from their original position. We have fixed it in the corrected version of the Figure.

- I would recommend adding a table where each included article is described, as it is in most systematic reviews. This may be in the supplementary material, but I did not notice it. It would be better to include it in the main text. 

AUTHORS: Again it was a submission problem. In fact, even in the old version of the manuscript there was written: “The following data were gathered from each of the included studies (see Table 1):” But the Reviewer is right, the Table 1 was missed (not uploaded on the manuscript). We have now added the required following Table 1 in the main manuscript (Please see it on the manuscript, for the sake of brevity we have not replicated it here).

- please standardise the font of the text and references in the text (sometimes they are without brackets)

AUTHORS: Done.

- line 235 page 8:

"Visual imagery can be internal (first-person) or external (third-person), depending on whether the athlete is imagining himself or herself or another person performing the task [53]".- in an external perspective it is also possible to imagine oneself, but on a screen - please correct it 

AUTHORS: The reviewer is right, we have now changed the sentence as follows:

“Visual imagery can be internal (first person) or external (third person), depending if the athlete is imagining himself performing the task from his eye perspective or as from a distance [53].”

Thank you.

AUTHORS: Thank to you for your time and your help useful for improving our manuscript.

Reviewer 2 Report

It is a well-conducted systematic review, using appropriate methodological tools such as PRISMA and PEdro, however the results they present are basically a qualitative description, leaving important quantitative elements unworked.

For this reason, my suggestion is to introduce a table in which the main characteristics of the 12 selected articles are presented: their methodological quality score (PEDro), the variables that are worked on, the methods used, year of publication, n of participants...

The authors should also establish a clear objective informing that the systematic analysis is mixed: both quantitative and qualitative.

Author Response

AUTHORS: We would like to thank the Editor and the Reviewers for the general positive judgments about our work. In the following our point-by-point responses to the qualified comments of the Reviewers that helped us in furtherly improving our manuscript in its revised version. To facilitate their work, we have also reported here (between apices and in italic style) the changed/new parts of the manuscript added in accordance to their comments.

It is a well-conducted systematic review, using appropriate methodological tools such as PRISMA and PEdro, however the results they present are basically a qualitative description, leaving important quantitative elements unworked.

AUTHORS: Thank you for your general positive comment about our work. We are so sorry, because for a problem occurred during the upload of the files, two tables, reporting quantitative elements, were lost. We have added them in the resubmitted version of our manuscript, as described below.

For this reason, my suggestion is to introduce a table in which the main characteristics of the 12 selected articles are presented: their methodological quality score (PEDro), the variables that are worked on, the methods used, year of publication, n of participants...

AUTHORS: We perfectly agree with the Reviewer, we prepared this Table for a problem during upload it was not reported in the submitted version of our manuscript. In fact, even in the previous version of our manuscript we have written:

“The following data were gathered from each of the included studies (see Table 1)”

and

“Methodological quality of each study was assessed using the PEDro Scale [43] (see Table 2).”

But both these Tables were missing.

Now we have added both these Tables. Table 1 reports for each study: authors, year of publication, mean age of participants, PEDRO quality score, description of PETTLEP criteria and settings, and a brief summarization of the obtained results. The Table 2 provides the single-item scores of the PEDRO quality index in the different domains that this scale takes into account. For the sake of brevity, we have not reported the two tables here, please see them in the submitted revised manuscript.

The authors should also establish a clear objective informing that the systematic analysis is mixed: both quantitative and qualitative.

AUTHORS: According to this comment, we have now added this information in the abstract and in the introduction. We have written in the abstract:

“After the application of inclusion criteria, a total of 12 articles (including 332 total participants) were included in this mixed review that reports quantitative and qualitative results.”

In the Introduction we have now written:
“This mixed review, reporting qualitative and quantitative results, aims to critically analyze the evidence provided throughout the years regarding the application of Motor Imagery (MI) in sport performance done in agreement with the criteria of the PETTLEP approach.”